Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night host, had his show suspended “indefinitely” from ABC on Wednesday after the Federal Communications Commission, the US’s broadcast media regulator, threatened the television network.

The FCC threats came in retaliation for comments Kimmel made on his show regarding Charlie Kirk’s death and the Trump administration’s response to it. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel began.

Kimmel then played a clip of Donald Trump’s comments following Kirk’s death. When one journalist asked Trump how he was holding up after the death of his friend, the president responded: “I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They just started construction for the new ballroom of the White House, which is something that they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it’s gonna be a beauty.”

“This is not how an adult grieves the murder of someone he called a friend,” Kimmel said. “This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”

On a rightwing podcast on Wednesday, the FCC commissioner, Brendan Carr, an avowed Trump ally who wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025, said that Kimmel’s monologue – delivered before much about Kirk’s alleged attacker’s motivations was known – was “sick” for suggesting that the shooter may have been affiliated with the Maga movement. He said: “In what appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into that........

© The Guardian